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Shakespearean Notes 



NEW READINGS. 



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NEW YORK : 
INDUSTRIAL PUBLICATION COMPANY 

1901. 
Copyright secured 1901 by John Phin 



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THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Cores Received 

APR. 19 1901 

COPYRtGMT ENTRY 

CLASS O^XXc. N«. 
COPY 3. 









s 



TO :my frienb 

Millfam 5* ^incMc^, 

IN :memory of 

MANY PLEASANT HOURS, 

THESE NOTES AEE DEDICATED 

WITH THE SINCERE REGARD OF 

THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE* 



p^OE nearly two hundred years the works of Shakes- 
■ peare have been the subject of earnest examination 
and study by some of the mightiest intellects of Europe 
and America. It would therefore seem that the extensive 
knowledge and profound learning of these men ought to 
have thrown such a literary search light on every line of 
the great dramatist's works that those who come after 
them would find but scanty gleaning, if, indeed, they could 
find any point at all worth bringing to the notice of their 
fellow-students. Fully impressed with this truth it is 
with great diffidence that the writer offers the following 
notes to his fellow-lovers of Shakespeare, But being also 
impressed with the great value of any view which may 
throw new light on any passage in these writings he has 
decided to publish these notes, some of which embody 
points that he feels assured must be generally accepted. 

JOHN PHIN. 

Paterson, N. J., 

December 6th, 1900. 



Shakespearean Notes^ 



**Like a full acorn'd Boare, a larmen on," 

First Folio, 1623. 

**Like a full-acorn'd boar, a German one." 

Cymbeline, II. 5. 16 (Modern Editions). 

In the jfirst folio edition of Shakespeare's works, in 
the play of " Cymbeline," page 380, the second line of 
the first column reads as follows : 

^*Like a full Acorn'd Boare, a larmen on." 

This reading maintained its place in subsequent 
folios, although the words, '' a larmen on," are utterly 
unintelligible. 

Rowe suggested that ^' larmen " was a misprint for 
'^German," and Malone defends this reading on the 
ground that boars were not hunted in England in the 
time of Shakespeare — an argument which is open to 
two fatal objections : First, the boar of which Post- 
humus speaks was not a hunted boar at all, but simply 
a full-fed, lusty beast, which might have been in a 



8 Shakespearean Notes 

forest, a barnyard, or even in a pen ; and, secondly, 
the scene is not supposed to have occurred in the 
time of Shakespeare, but during the first half cen- 
tury of the Christian era, according to Holinshed, 
from whom Shakespeare undoubtedly got his histori- 
cal facts. 

As Malone very properly observes, the word *' one" 
was often spelled *^ on," so that this point creates no 
difficulty. 

But why a *' German " boar ? lachimo was an 
Italian ; the scene of his exploit lay in Great Britain, 
and there seems to be no suggestion of Germany in 
the case. 

Warburton saw the irrelevancy of ^' German " and 
substituted **a churning on" for ** a larmen on," the 
object being to give the idea of an excited animal 
champing and churning the foam which gathered at 
his mouth. Carrying out the same idea, Collier's MS. 
corrector reads "foaming" for "larmen," and Collier 
gives several reasons for the change. 

It is admitted on all hands that the difficulty arose 
among the printers who, being unable to make out 
the original MS., put letters together as best they 
could. What, then, was the word which puzzled the 
compositor who set up this line and which he moulded 
into " larmen ? " To me it seems scarcely to admit of 



and New Readin^rs. 



doubt that the word was " human," and that the cor- 
rect reading of " Cymbeline " II. 5, 16. is : 

** Like a full acom'd boar, a human one," 

that is to say, a man with the characteristics of a boar, 
just as we say a ** human tiger." And this is evidently 
what Posthumus meant. 

This becomes the more probable when we remem- 
ber that in the writing of that period both the capital 
I and the lower case h were carried below the line, 
and hence might readily be taken one for the other. 
The reader may easily satisfy himself on the latter 
point by examining the facsimiles of the Shakespeare 
signatures. Keeping this in mind, if we write the 
words " human " and " larmen " one above the other 
it will be seen how readily the mistake might occur. 

The reading, " a German one," has been adopted 
in aU the modern editions that I have seen. I feel 
almost certain that it is wrong. 



io Shakespearean Notes 



Ford : What, a hodge-pudding ? a bag of flax ? 

Mrs. Page : A puffed man ? 

Page: Old, cold, withered, and of intolerable entrails? 

Meeey Wives of Windsor, V. 5, 159. 

The above is the reading in the First Folio, and it 
has been adopted without question by all subsequent 
editors, and in the latest complete Yariorum edition 
of Shakespeare* there is no note of any suggestion of 
a different reading. 

Nevertheless, to me it seems very much like non- 
sense. Flax is not usually packed in bags but is gen- 
erally put up in bundles, and, moreover, there would 
be nothing very offensive about a bag filled with flax, 
while the epithet is obviously intended to be an 
abusive one. 

I feel sure, therefore, that the word flax is a mis- 
print for Jlux, a euphemistic substitute for a much 
more vulgar and offensive term. 

This is not the only passage in Shakespeare's works 
in which the word **flux" is used in this or a similar 
Bense. It occurs in *' As You Like It," III. 2, 70, 



♦ The Cambridge Edition of Shakespeare's works, edited by W. 
Aldis Wright, LL.D. 9 vols. New York ; Macmiilan Co. 



and New Readings. ii 



where Toucnstone speaks of " the very uncleanly flux 
of a cat." 

Falstaff's protuberant corpulency gave occasion for 
many such scurrilous and abusive comparisons. Thus, 
in '' I Henry IV." II. 4, 497, he is called ^^a stuffed 
cloak-bag of guts." A *' bag of flax " would be a mild 
and almost senseless phrase compared with this and 
other expressions, some of which Shakespeare puts 
into the mouths of the ^* Wives." 



12 Shakespearean Notes 



Boderigo: Here is her fathers house; I'll call aloud. 
lago: Do with like timorous accent and dire yell 

As when, by night and negligence, the fire 

Is spied in populous cities. 

Othello, I. 1, 7i. 

The quotation which stands at the head of this note 
is the recognized reading of the standard Shakes- 
pearean text. That it is ntter nonsense must be ob- 
vious to even the most cursory reader, and yet it 
holds its place in all modern editions. 

How could a fire be " spied " by negligence ? If 
spied at all, a certain amount of attention must have 
been called into action, and certainly attentive ob- 
servation is the very opposite of negligence. 

Warburton saw this loDg ago, and in his edition 
(1747), Vol. VIII., page 278, we find this note : 

" This is not sense, take it which way you will. If 
night and negligence relate to spied, it is absurd to say 
the fir ^ was spied by negligence. If night and negligence 
refer only to the time and occasion, it should then be 
by night and through negligence. Otherwise the particle 
by would be made to signify time appUed to one word, 
and cause applied to the other. We should read, there- 



and New Readings. 13 



fore, J$ Speed, by which all these faults are avoided. 
But what is of most weight, the simiUtude thus emended, 
agrees best with the fact it is applied to. Had this notice 
been given to Brabantio before his daughter ran away 
and married, it might then indeed have been well enough 
compared to the alarm given of a fire just spied, assoon 
(sic) as it was begun. But being given after the parties 
were bedded it was more fitly compared to a fire spred hy 
night and negligence, so as not to be extinguished," 

Johnson, in his edition published soon after that of 
Warburton, criticised this note very severely on gram- 
matical grounds, and it is probably in consequence of 
this that Warburton's suggestion has never been 
adopted. But the question is not one of grammar at 
all, but one of common sense. However poorly or 
however ably the idea may be expressed, it still stands 
as a truth that cannot be disputed, that no fire was 
ever " spied by negligence," and the more the negli- 
gence the less the chance of a fire being " spied." 

Some have paraphrased the sentence so as to make 
it read '^ at night and through negligence," but this 
does not help the matter at all. 

The substitution of " spied " for " spred " in the 
printing office, depending as it does upon the exchange 
of one letter for another which closely resembles it 
in form, would not be difficult, as every proof-reader 



!4 Shakespearean Notes 

knows ; and while the modern spelling of the word is 
"spread," the older specimens of printing give both 
" spred " and " spread," and the former more fre- 
quently than the latter. Thus in the note quoted from 
Warburton the spelling is " spred," and the same is 
the case in the First Folio, in '' Ooriolanus " III. 1, 
311; "Hamlet" III. 4, 151; "Hamlet" IV. 7, 176, 
and other passages. 

It is certainly to be hoped that hereafter the read- 
ing of this passage will be 

" As when, by night and negligence, the fire 
Is spread in populous cities." 

For while it is unquestionably true that no one has 
a right to introduce so-called " improvements " into the 
text of any author, an exception should be made in the 
case of obvious typographical errors. Even when the 
text is carefully read by proof-readers and by the au- 
thor himself, errors of this kind are apt to creep in. 
In the present case we must remember that Shakes- 
peare had been in his grave seven years when the First 
Folio was published, and the proof-reading was cer- 
tainly very careless in many passages. In the words 
of Prof. Craik : " Indisputable and undisputed errors 
are of frequent occurrence, so gross that it is impossi- 
ble they could have been passed over, at any rate in 
such numbers, if the proof-sheets had undergone any 



and New Readings. 15 

systematic revision by a qualified person, however 
rapid. They were read in the printing office, with more 
or less attention, when there was time, and often, when 
there was any hurry or pressure, sent to press with 
little or no examination. Everything betokens that 
editor or editing of the volume, in any proper or dis- 
tinctive sense there could have been none. The only 
editor was manifestly the head workman in the print- 
ing-office." ^ 

The fact that the line as it stands is nonsense has 
been noticed by several Shakespearean students ; but 
the great difference between the modern spellings of 
''spied" and '' spread" has rendered it difficult to 
suggest the true reading, and I here revive the old 
suggestion of Warburton in the hope that this blur 
upon the accepted text may be removed. 



"The English of Shakespeare," Second Edition, p. 14. 



i6 Shakespearean Notes 



Falstaff: What trade art thou, Feeble? 

Feeble: A woman's tailor, Sir. 

Shallow: Shall I prick him, Sir? 

Falstaff: You may ; but if he had been a man's tailor he'd have 

pricked you. 

n Henby IV. in. 2. 164. 



It is very evident tliat the reply of Falstaff to Shal- 
low has a special significance which is to be found in 
the different meanings given to the word prick. As 
used by Shallow the word obviously means to mark 
or check off ; but this is not the signification of prick 
in Falstaff's reply. 

The interpretation given by Schmidt and others is 
*' to dress up," '' to trim." But although the word 
sometimes bears this signification it seems to me hard- 
ly likely that Falstaff would have uttered such a tru- 
ism as that. It would have ''gone without saying" 
that if Feeble had been a man's tailor he might have 
dressed a man. 

If the reader will turn to the opening of " The 
Merry Wives of Windsor " he will find that Shakespeare 
throws a great deal of ridicule on his old foe, Sir 
Thomas Lucy, who bore as his coat of arms three luo©» 



and New Readings. 17 

or pikes. These were increased to a dozen by Slender, 
and were called louses'^ by tlie "Welsh parson, Evans. 

Now if, in connection with this fact, we bear in 
mind that the slang name for a man's tailor is prick- 
louse,f we can have no difficulty in understanding Fal- 
staff's slurring remark. 

To my mind there is no doubt that Shakespeare 
here indulged in another fling at Sir Thomas Lucy 
(of whom Shallow is acknowledged to be the repre- 
sentative) and his luces or louses. 

Such an interpretation has some force in it, while 
to say that " to prick " here means " to dress '' has 
no point whatever. 

Before leaving this subject it may not be amiss to 
call the attention of our Baconian friends to the fol- 
lowing point : 

That Shakespeare and Sir Thomas Lucy were bitter 
enemies is a matter of record, and that Shakespeare 



* Louse is pronounced loos in the Scotch language, and was 
probably so pronounced in England in Shakespeare's tiDie. Not 
only the pronunciation of many words, but their meaning in the 
two languages was nearly alike and frequently different from that 
of the present time. I have on my shelves *' A Complete Commen- 
tary on Milton's Paradise Lost," published in 1744, by James Pat- 
erson, M. A., in which he claims to explain, amongst others, the 
words of " Old English or Scottish." 

f The word will be found in Burns and in all our large diction- 
aries. 



i8 Shakespearean Notes 

revenged himself by caricaturing the knight is uni- 
versally acknowledged. Hence the bringing in of the 
"luces," both in '^ The Merry "Wives of Windsor" 
and, as we believe, in ''II Henry IV." 

Bacon, on the other hand, was on terms of intimate 
friendship with the Lncj^s, being connected wdtli them 
by marriage. Is it, then, at all probable that if Bacon 
was the author, or even the editor, of these plays. Sir 
Thomas Lucy would have been held up to ridicule in 
this scurrilous manner ? 

I think not. And if so, what then becomes of the 
alleged "Cryptogram" in the First Folio ? 



and New Readings. 19 



King : But now my cousin Hamlet and my son. 

Hamlet (aside): A little more than kin and less than kind. 

Hamlet, I. 2. 64. 

namlet: * * * bloody, bawdy villain ! 

Kemorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain I 

Hamlet, II. 2. 608. 

O, had thy mother borne so hard a mind, 

She had not brought thee forth but died unkind. 

Venus and Adonis, 202. 

The meaning of the word kind, as it occurs in the 
first quotation which we have placed at the head of 
this page, has been the subject of much discussion. 
Dr. Furness, in his New Variorum edition of Shake- 
speare, occupies more than a closely-printed royal 
octavo page with the different interpretations which 
have been given by various authors. 

It is now more than a third of a century since the 
writer felt assured that the word '' kind " in this pas- 
sage did not mean either heiievolent or of the same 
naturae but child or son, and that it shoukl be pro- 
nounced so as to rhyme with the syllable kind, as 
found in kindergarten. 



30 Shakespearean Notes 

Since that time I have read several communications 
to the press in which the same idea was embodied, 
the authors of these letters having evidently reached 
this conclusion independently. 

» But it is nearly a century and a half since this in- 
terpretation of the passage in question was published, 
the author being no other than the famous lexi- 
cographer, Samuel Johnson. In the eighth volume 
of his edition of Shakespeare, page 141, he says : 
" Kind is the Teutonic word for child, Hamlet there- 
fore answers with propriety to the titles of cousin and 
son, which the King had given him, that he was some- 
what more than cousin and less than son.'^^ 

Johnson's view of the meaning of " kind " has not 
been generally accepted, the chief objection apparent- 
ly being that of Steevens, who, as Dr. Furness says, 
'' properly required some proof that ' kind ' was ever 
used by any English writer for * child.' " 

I confess that I cannot attach much importance to 
this objection. Shakespeare, as is well known, uses 
several purely German words ; he also employs one 
word which is used nowhere else, either by himself or 
any other author, and there are several words which 
are used only once in his writings. 

Now, while it is probably true that the word kind is 
used nowhere else as a synonym for child or son, it 



and New Readings. 21 

is a fact that in one, and perhaps in two instances, 
it forms part of a compound word in which it carries 
this meaning. One of these is found in the third 
quotation placed at the head of this note. In the last 
line the word unkind undoubtedly signifies childless ; 
at least this is the meaning attached to it by some of 
our ablest commentators. 

The second quotation contains a word which, so far 
as I can ascertain, is found nowhere else. All our 
large dictionaries give this passage from Hamlet as 
the sole authority for the word kindless, the definition 
given being ^^ unnatural." 

Many years ago it struck me that the true meaning 
of the word is childless — a condition which has always 
been a subject of reproach. Under this impression I 
addressed a note to the late Edwin Booth, an ac- 
knowledged authority on the interpretation of this 
play. His reply was as follows : 

"Baltimore, October llth^ 1879, 
'•John Phin, Esq, 
'• Dear Sir: 

" Some years ago my attention was directed, 
doubtless by yourself, to the passage in question, but as I 
thought of no other interpretation of ' kind ' than that 
of kinship I have refrained from using the obsolete ex- 



2^ Shakespearean Notes 

pression (kind) lest it might perplex rather than instruct 
my hearers. 

''Tour idea that 'kindless' is a reproachful reference 
to the childless condition of ' Claudius ' is certainly in- 
genious. 

"The glossaries give 'unnatural' as its definition; 
but I suspect that Shakespeare intended a more compre- 
hensive one, and that 'Hamlet,' by this forced use of the 
word, means that ' Claudius ' is alone in his great vil- 
lainy — that there is none other of his kind or genus. 

" Perhaps this notion of mine is far-fetched, but, to my 

thinking, it is Shakespearean. At all events, 'tis more 

forcible, I fancy, than the mere reproachful ' dig ' at the 

king's sterility. 

" Truly yours, 

"Edwin Booth." 

Mr. Booth's letter undoubtedly gives the meaning 
of these passages as understood by the ordinary 
hearer, and his reason for using tiie pronunciation 
which served to emphasize that meaning is a good 
one. Nevertheless, I cannot avoid the impression 
that in these two passages Shakespeare intended to 
convey ideas which are more pointed or striking than 
those which attach to the interpretation usually given 
by the commentators. 

In the first passage, the words of Hamlet are evi- 



iad i^ew Readings. 23 



dently a commentary on the speech of the king. The 
king commences by addressing Hamlet as his cousin ; 
then, evidently after a slight pause for thought, he 
adds, " and my son." To Hamlet this address seems 
to imply just what any hearer would infer, viz., that 
cousin was not quite close enough, and yet there 
might be some hesitation in calling him son, seeing 
that he was only a stepson. Hence the propriety 
of Hamlet's aside—a little more than mere cousin 
or kin and yet not quite a son, though the king had 
married his mother — the word kind being here em- 
ployed instead of son for the sake of the jiugle be- 
tween kin and kind^ the i in both being pronounced 
alike. 

That the old dramatists were much given to these 
jingling contrasts is well known to all students of the 
literature of that age. Of this. Dr. Furness, in his 
edition of Hamlet^ gives several illustrations taken 
from old writers; and that Shakespeare himself was 
fond of this kind of play upon words is well known to 
students of his works. Thus, in '' Macbeth " II, 3, 

146, we find 

** * * * the near in blood 
The nearer bloody." 

In regard to the word kindless, as found in the 
second quotation, we must bear in mind that the word 



24 Shakespearean Notes 



occurs in a torrent of invective, Hamlei having, as h^ 

himself tells us, 

*' * * * unpacked his heart with words, 
And fallen a-cursing like a very drab, 
A scnllion ! " 

The idea conveyed by each of the words used is, 
therefore, simple and direct. Hamlet here employs 
no words involving far-fetched or intricate thoughts, 
and certainly the drab-like and scurrilous taunt of 
sterility is quite in keeping with the other expres- 
sions, for we all know that such an imputation has 
always been considered one of the bitterest. Time 
out of mind old maids and old bachelors have been 
a mark for the scurrilous epithets uttered by drabs 
and scullions. 

And in this very play (III. 2. 260) Hamlet himself 
boasts of his own virility. 

Therefore, while the conclusion may not be posi- 
tively certain, it seems to me that it is altogether the 
most likely that child or son is the true meaning of 
^lie word kind in all these passages. 



and New Readings. 23 



Slender: Two Edward shovel-boards, that cost me two shilling 
and two pence a-piece of Yead Miller, by these gloves. 

The Merry Wives of Windsor, I. 1. 160. 
Ihlstaff: Hear ye, Yedward. 

I Henry IV. I. 2. 149. 

It is unnecessary to explain that " Yead " and 
"Yedward" are variations of Ed and Edward, As 
to the origin of these variations, different explanations 
have been given. ^* Some say that T" is a contraction 
of my " (Eolfe) ; but this we very much doubt. It 
seems to us rather to be a relic of the Scotch or old 
English, in which y was and is frequently prefixed to 
words beginning with a vowel. Thus, in '' Guy Man- 
nering," Vol. II, page 222 (of the edition of 1829), 
Dominie Sampson promises to deliver to Col. Man- 
nering the " sealed yepistle " of Meg Merrilies ; and in 
'' St. Ronan's Well," Vol. II, page 196 (same edition) 
once {aince) is spelled yince. In the south of Scotland 
the y is frequently so used at this day. Thus, aits 
(oats) is pronounced yits ; eild (age) yields etc., etc. 

Consequently, the use of the Y iu the passages we 
have quoted is not to be wondered at, since the writ- 
ings of Shakespeare are full of Scotticisms or old 
English forms which have passed out of use. 



26 Shakespearean Notes 



Falstaff: What, is the old king dead? 

Fistol: As nail in door : the things I speak are just. 

H Henky IY. v. 3, 125. 

Cade ; * * * Come thou and thy five men, and if I do not 

leave you all as dead as a door nail, I pray God I may never eat 

grass more. 

II Henet YI. IY. 10, 43. 

The saying, "dead as a door nail," is found in 
Piers Plowman, and, indeed, the comparison is not 
only quite old, but very common even now. 

In most of our large dictionaries, the word "door 
nail" is defined as "the nail on which, in ancient 
doors, the knocker struck." This definition is due 
to Steevens (1763), who, as is well known, was so noted 
alike for his ability and the recklessness with which 
he used the scintillations of his imagination as a sub- 
stitute for the results of knowledge and research, that 
he has been called the Puck of commentators. Stee- 
vens gives the following account of the origin of the 
expression, " dead as a door nail " : " This proverbial 
expression is oftener used than understood. The door 
nail is the nail on which, in ancient doors, the knocker 
strikes. It is, therefore, used as a comparison to any 



and New Readings. 



one irrecoverably dead, one who has fallen (as Virgil 
says) multa morte, that is, with abundant death, such 
as iteration of strokes on the head would naturally 
produce." 

This comment or gloss seems to have been accepted 
without hesitation by all subsequent editors, and with- 
out any hint that there might be another and a truer 
explanation. I am fully aware of the fact that we 
must not criticise these proverbial expressions too 
closely or carry our explanations too far. Beams of 
paper and quarts of ink have been wasted on Hamlet's 
saying, '^I know a hawk from a handsaw," and yet 
this is not more inconsequent than hundreds of other 
comparisons in common use, such as : ^' I don't know 
him from a side of sole leather ; " " He does not kaow 
a B from a bull's foot;" "Smiling as a basket of 
chips;" " Crazy as a bed-bug," (which, by the way, 
as I have been credibly informed, is a most deliberate 
and vicious little animal). The pith of these ridicu- 
lous comparisons seems to consist in the absurd con- 
trasts which they present, sometimes aided by a sort 
of jingling alliteration, as in the case of the door nail. 

I must confess, however, that Steevens' account of 
the origin of the expression " dead as a door nail," 
seems to me altogether too subtle and refined to be 
historically true. It certainly never entered into the 



28 Shakespearean Notes 



minds of the " mechanicals " amongst whom it prob- 
ably originated and by whom chiefly it was used, as 
is seen even at the present day. What, then, was the 
most probable origin of the saying ? 

In the olden time all nails used in building con- 
struction were made of wrought iron, and were capa- 
ble of being clinched^ as it is called — that is, the points 
were turned over, beut back and forced into the wood 
in a direction the reverse of that in which the nail was 
originally driven. Moreover, the doors of those days 
were not like the flimsy affairs which now do duty in 
our houses. They had no panels which a stout tramp 
could knock to pieces with a kick of his foot, but were 
made of vertical boards, or rather thin planks, crossed 
on the inside with a series of bars or battens, so that 
the door practically consisted of two thicknesses of 
boards firmly nailed together, the nails being clinched, 
so that it was very difficult to withdraw them. These 
doors were so stout that they easily resisted the utmost 
strength of half a dozen men, and in fact nothing 
short of a sledge-hammer could force them, this great 
strength being absolutely necessary in the troublous 
times when they were in use. 

Now when a nail had been thus driven and clinched 
it was rendered entirely useless until re-forged; it 
was, for all practical purposes, dead^ and hence formed 



and New Readings. 2g 



a fair comparison for man or animal that was dead 
past recovery. 

That this application of the word dead and the 
allied word kill is neither far-fetched nor nnusual is 
familiar knowledge to printers and mechanics. The 
printer talks of '' dead matter" — that is, type that for 
any reason cannot be used. And he also speaks of 
*' killing " an article that is in type, by which he means 
setting the type aside to be distributed. So the en- 
gineer speaks of ^^ killing" an engine when he re- 
moves some essential part so that the machine cannot 
be used, and such an engine is said to be '' dead." 

The part on which the old knocker struck was gen- 
erally a portion of the frame in which it was held. It 
is true that in the very cheap knockers a short, broad- 
headed nail may sometimes have been used for this 
purpose ; but this nail would have been easily with- 
drawn, and might be effectively used again, so that it 
was not by any means "dead" in the mechanical sense 
of the term, as were the nails used in constructing the 
door. 

I am therefore led to reject Steevens' conjectural 
explanation and definition, and to believe that the 
proverb was based on the fact that a nail which had 
been used for holding together the planks and battens 
of a door was practically used up or '' dead." 



30 Shakespearean Notes 



WHAT IS A SIXPENNY NAIL? 

Falstaff: You may buy land now as cheap as stinking mackerel. 

Prince : Why then it is like, if there come a hot June, and this 
civil buffeting hold, we shall buy maiden-heads, as they buy hob- 
nails, toy the hundreds. 

I Henry IV. II. 4, 394. 

About thirty years ago some writer with more im- 
agination than industry, contributed to one of our 
literary journals a short article on nails, in which he 
explained that the word penny in the compounds six- 
penny, tenpenny, etc., was a corruption of pound, and 
that the word sixpenny really meant sixpound, or 
'' sixpun," as it was said to be vulgarly pronounced, 
and that a thousand sixpenny nails weighed six 
pounds. Five minutes spent in any hardware store 
would have destroyed this fine-spun theory; but it 
was more easy, as well as more pleasant, to write a 
taking article than to count and weigh out rough 
nails. So the article was published, and was at once 
taken up and quoted by the press throughout the 
country as being an interesting and valuable item of 



and New Readings. 31 



information. Of course the correctness of this ex- 
planation was denied over and over again, the writer, 
amongst others, giving the true origin of the word 
penny in this connection. But the error kept trium- 
phantly on its way, and the statement has now found 
a place in most of our large dictionaries—'^ The Im- 
perial," '^The Century," "The International," "The 
Standard," etc. 

Fortunately, the facts connected with the liistorj^ of 
the nomenclature of nails have not passed beyond the 
memory of living men. The old names were based upon 
the actual conditions existing at the time when they 
were first applied, and all the changes that have since 
taken place have been made within recent times. 

Up to a point of time well within the present cen- 
tury, all the nails used in Great Britain in building, 
cabinet-making, fencing, etc., were hand-forged, and 
were sold by count. Three or four kinds, used for 
special purposes, were cast. Of these were " spara- 
bles " (sparrow-bills), a short, thick nail used by shoe- 
makers ; " lathers," used by plasterers for nailing 
laths; "wallers," used by gardeners for nailing the 
woolen or leather straps which held the branches of 
fruit trees to walls, etc. The large-headed brass nails 
used by trunk-makers were also cast ; but the great 
bulk of the nails in common use were forged by hand 



3^ Shakespearean Notes 

out of iron rods, known as '^ nail-rods," and were sold 
by the hundred. Of course, the larger and heavier 
the nail the more iron and the more labor were required 
in forging, but even the short, large-headed nails used 
by shoe makers, and known as ^^clout-" or *' hob-nails,' 
were sold by count, and of this we have a curious 
record in the passage quoted at the head of this note. 
In the first part of '' Henry IV." II. 4, 399, Falstaff 
tells the Prince : '' You may buy land now as cheap as 
stinking mackerel." To which the Prince replies: 
** Why then, it is like, if there come a hot June, and 
this civil buffeting hold, we shall buy maiden-heads 
as they buy hob-nails, by the hundreds " — a pretty 
clear proof that in Shakespeare's time nails were sold 
by count. 

A sixpenny nail, therefore, was one that was sold for 
six pence per hundred; ten-penny nails sold for ten 
pence per hundred, and so on for other sizes. 

Prior to the invention of the machine-made article, 
nails were quite costly. Adam Smith tells us that in 
the eighteenth century nails were used in Scotland for 
money, just as bullets were in New England at one 
time; and by the old carpenters, wooden pins were 
made to take the place of nails of even medium sizes. 
As they became cheaper the nailers at first gave a 
greater number to the hundred, hence the " long 



and New Readings. 33 

hundred " of six score, just as bakers gave thirteen 
for a dozen. When the vahie fell still lower, the 
price was changed, and sixpenny nails were sold for 
five, four and even threepence per hundred. 

When the invention of the steam engine had greatly 
lessened the cost of mining coal and the expense of 
manufacturing iron, numerous attempts were made to 
produce nails by machinery. None of these inven- 
tions was commercially successful until the introduc- 
tion of the American cut nails. These lowered 'the 
price so much that thereafter nails were sold alto- 
gether by weight, and the original designations of 
*^ sixpenny," " twopenny," etc., became merely a rude 
index of size, which was as often designated by length 
as otherwise, as two-inch nails, five-inch nails, etc. 

But there are two directions in which the size of a 
nail may be varied — length and thickness, and the 
latter, as is easily understood, is best expressed by 
weight for a given length. In the old days of nails 
sold by count, there were three grades of nails — 
" common," " bastard," and " fine ; " afterward the 
thickness was regulated by weight per thousand, and 
there were "seven-pound," "ten-pound," etc., nails of 
a given length. But this was long after the use of the 
terms " sixpenny," " tenpenny," etc., had been es- 
tablished, so that it would be absurd to derive the 



tofC. 



k 



34 Shakespearean Notes. 

word penny from the word pounds which came after 
it, and not before. 

It is to be hoped that in the " New English Dic- 
tionary/' edited by Dr. Murray, the errors we have 
just pointed out will be corrected. Etymologists are 
now universally agreed that the actual history of a 
word is the only key to its origin, and a little enquiry 
amongst the older carpenters of London would soon 
set the question forever at rest. Enquiry might also 
be made in " The Black Country," where the making 
of nails by hand was at one time carried on quite ex- 
tensively, and I believe is not yet entirely given up. 
There must be men now living who can remember all 
about the early nails, and can give the facts necessaiy 
for a correct explanation of the words in use. 




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